There’s a guy in Pflugerville who leases out food trucks to independent operators. He had some issues with the way the City of Austin regulated food trucks, and started lobbying for stricter rules “to address health, safety and environmental concerns”. Ultimately, the City Council did make some changes to the law.
Can you guess what’s coming?
More:
As much as I like LaRue Tactical and the 10/22, this is one product I won’t be purchasing.
(Hattip: Say Uncle.)
(Edited to add: Video of the product in action here. Thanks to our friend James.)
I generally don’t read Stratfor articles unless someone points me to them. Nothing against Stratfor; it’s just a matter of limited time, and the sort of geopolitics Stratfor usually covers being more along the lines of other bloggers.
However, Snowflakes In Hell has a link to a solid article on the Mexican gun issue.
Interesting fact:
Interesting article in the NYT about the state of the Houston Grand Opera, focusing in particular on their recent productions of “Dead Man Walking” and “Lucia di Lammermoor”.
Good to know.
Emory Bellard, former Texas, Texas A&M, and Spring Westfield football coach.
There’s nothing wrong with breast cancer awareness, but where are the colored mugs and other tchotkes for ALS?
Actual HouChron headline:
Actual text of article:
I see the Journalist’s Guide to Firearms Identification is still in use.
Staff Sergeant and Medal of Honor recipient Sal Giunta is leaving the military when his current tour ends in mid-June.
You know, if I ran a public (or private) university somewhere, I’d come up with the money to offer Sgt. Giunta a full free ride for four years. Maybe he’d be willing to work part-time, perhaps as a mentor to younger students who could use some help?
The NYT reports on the controversy over early “Spider-Man” reviews.
Lucky J’s Chicken and Waffles has opened their sit-down restaurant. Until I visited their website, I had no idea how tough these guys have had it. I knew about the trailer theft, of course, but the death of a child, divorce, and reconstructive hand surgery? This guy sounds like Austin’s own version of Job. I’m going to try Lucky J’s this weekend; not because of the suffering, but because I like the idea, and because it’s sort of on my usual weekend path. (Man does not live by Torchy’s Tacos alone. Though I have to admit, the new location on Burnet Road is much nicer than some of the others I’ve been to.) Full report to follow.
The LAT would like for you to know that cockfighting is bad, m’kay? And not just because people sometimes get stabbed to death by roosters with blades.
Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, has passed away.
I came in right at the end of the DEC era, and never really had a chance to work on a PDP-anything, a VAX, or a DEC-XX. (There was, at one point, a scheme to purchase a used PDP-8, but nothing ever came of that.)
I still smile, though, whenever I see a reference to one of those machines (or, for that matter, one of those machines in person at DEFCON).
In honor of the late Mr. Olsen, here’s a link to SIMH, which will let you emulate much of the DEC line.
If you want a pretty constant diet of WTF moments, the best thing you could do is subscribe to The Agitator‘s RSS feed. Be warned, though, that Balko’s collection of “WTF” moments is also likely to lead to an increase in your blood pressure.
Sometimes, something just jumps out at me from his site that goes beyond the usual “WTF” moments. This story is one of those moments.
Short summary: Barney Brown was arrested at the age of 14, tried in juvenile court for a rape and robbery, and acquitted. But that’s not the “WTF?” part. The prosecutor put him on trial again for the same crimes as an adult. He was convicted, and sent to prison for life.
This took place in 1969. Barney Brown served 38 years.
The fact that one trial took place in juvenile court and the second in adult court doesn’t matter. There is clearly settled case law on this; once Barney Brown was acquitted in juvenile court, jeopardy protections applied. The prosecutor had no authority, no right, no legal ground, and no business trying Barney Brown again in an adult court.
This is the kind of egregious misconduct by a prosecutor that, I believe, rises to a standard where the shield of “sovereign immunity” can, and should, be pierced. In a just world, that prosecutor (if he is still alive) would be in prison right now, and his assets would be signed over to Barney Brown.
Mystery! Suspense! Pathos! None of those are present in this week’s “Tuesday Morning Quarterback“, but that doesn’t stop us from blogging it anyway. After the jump…
Oh, look! The producers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” are upset that reviewers reviewed the show when it was still in infinite preview mode!
If you’ll excuse me a second, I’m going out and purchasing tiny violin futures.
And I’d argue that part of being a “professional” is not giving the people you cover the power to jerk you around that Feldman and other critics (including John Simon) seemingly want the “Spider-Man” producers to have.
Meanwhile, Patrick Healy has a more comprehensive roundup of reviews.
(Hattip to Jimbo for both of these.)
There are a couple of interesting things in the NYT this morning.
J. Paul Getty III passed away over the weekend. That’s a name (like Koo Stark, he said, tipping his hat in Lawrence’s direction) I hadn’t thought of in years. Getty was most famous as the victim of a kidnapping “by Italian gangsters” during which his ear was cut off. I knew he was something of a party animal, but I was unaware of his 1981 stroke (apparently the result of an overdose). I was also unaware that Balthazar Getty was his son.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles (and specifically LACMA) are trying to figure out how to maintain the Watts Towers, and how to get more tourists to a part of town that’s most famous for riots.
And the NYT has made their move:
Yes, this is a real review.
The fallout from the NYT decision should be interesting. The pin has been pulled from Mr. Grenade. He is no longer Ben Brantley’s friend. On the other hand, Charles McNulty in the LAT has Brantley’s back:
And it looks like Peter Marks in the WP is standing with Brantley and McNulty:
Charles Willeford
In other news, the WP has discovered (reporter with a database!) that people in “Washington’s safest, most well-to-do neighborhoods” have registered more guns than people in “poorer, crime-plagued areas of the city”. I may have more to say on this later, time permitting.
Edited to add: I was in a hurry to finish that last post and hadn’t got to the Statesman yet, unfortunately. I previously noted the fires at several Austin restaurants, including the Green Muse Cafe. (There was also a recent fire at Habana, which I didn’t note for reasons that escape me at the moment.)
Anyway, APD made an arrest:
The Texas Department of Transportation is doing some work this weekend at the intersection of Interstate 35 and Ben White Boulevard (aka Texas 71). Specifically, they’ll be working on some new flyovers in that area. I would embed a Google Maps image here, but apparently WordPress 3.0.4 has a bug with embedding iFrames. You can try clicking here.
Anyway, what does this mean to you, Al Franken? TXDOT is closing the entire freeway from “late Friday evening to early Monday morning”. Yes, you read that right, the entire freeway. They’re diverting traffic onto the access road:
If I lived in the area, I’d stock up on popcorn. This is going to be better than the zoo and the circus combined. As for the rest of us, I think staying far away from I-35 for the duration is the best course of action.
I know I’m “rooting for laundry”, but I have a certain fondness for the Green Bay Packers. A major reason for that is their unique ownership structure. The Packers are a public corporation, with stock and everything. (The NFL will not allow any other team to adopt this ownership structure; the Packers are grandfathered in. This is the kind of behavior by the NFL that would make me want my congressman to start asking questions, if I believed in that sort of thing.) Anyway, here’s a good New Yorker piece that explains how the Packers work in more detail. And yes, my black little heart is filled with delight today. (Hattip: Gruber.)
We have previously mentioned the death of General Vang Pao, and the question of whether he would be buried at Arlington. The answer to that question was “no”; the Pentagon turned down the family’s request. Mark Arax has a good piece in the NYT about the General’s funeral.
(I’m not going to put a “Part 1” on that because this is probably the first and last time you will ever see those words together.)
Stephen Hunter, former WP movie critic and awesome thriller writer
(Hattip: Say Uncle. Actually, one of his commenters.)
(Edited to add: Better Say Uncle link here.)